“Better not to worry about what you can’t know,” Simone announced, plucking cake crumbs from her apron.
“I know how to make a dress a lady asks for,” said Madame. “What I don’t know is if she’ll still like it at the fitting. What do you think, Irma? Will Mrs. Cooley like the russet? Irma, are you listening?”
“Excuse me, Madame. Which?”
“The russet walking dress with lined jacket. Will she like it? Remember the gray damask ball gown? She had us change the sleeves three times.”
“She’ll like the russet,” I said quickly. “Perhaps with ivory buttons.”
“Ivory? Hum. Where to get the best ones?” From Jacob, Simone thought. Madame said no, better Alfonso the Portuguese who had them straight from Africa. But I was thinking of how Sofia had given quinine to a Negro man with malarial chills who had come from New Orleans. We stood with his wife and son, dripping with sweat in the stifling room as the sick man moaned for blankets, shivering so hard that his cot rattled on the wooden floor and his teeth chattered like tiny hammers.
“Will they break?” the son asked anxiously. I tried to force a length of cloth into the man’s mouth, but he batted my hand away.
“Never mind the teeth. Give him this,” Sofia told the wife, handing her a small bottle of quinine. “But it’s all I have. You’ll have to buy more.” Quinine costs, she told me bitterly as we walked to the next patient, and so the poor with malaria would keep on dying. If there had been quinine in the village I had passed with Attilio, little Rosanna would not have watched her family die.
“Irma!” said Madame. “I asked if you’ll get buttons from the Portuguese.”
“Yes, Madame. Certainly.”
I went on Monday and bargained a good price. That evening I was working with Sofia, making calls in a shabby street north of Maxwell, when a brightly dressed, slightly hunchbacked young woman stopped us on a stairwell.
“My husband—” she began. The women snickered. “My husband,” she insisted, “he shakes and says he don’t see straight.”
“Because he’s corned, Daisy, what’s new about that? He’s corned blind,” a voice called out.
“Jake’s not drunk,” Daisy insisted. “He ain’t been out of the flat in three days. He drinks water all the time and still he says he’s dying of thirst. I’m so scared, lady. He’s never been like this.”
Sofia set down her bag and leaned back against the banister. “His breath?” she asked calmly. “Is it the same as before?” The women hanging on the stairways protested: one called us to her child’s wracking cough; a woman complained of a gnawing burn in the stomach. A carpenter’s wrist was broken; another’s limp was worse; there was a woman half starved from morning sickness and a baby that would not grow.
“His breath’s always the same,” said a lanky woman leaning over the railing. “Always stinks of whiskey.”
“I told you, Jake’s not drunk,” shouted Daisy. Her dark-rimmed eyes scanned the crowd up and down the stairwell. “He stopped all that. He took the Temperance Pledge last month.” She turned to Sofia. “His breath is changed. It smells like medicine something strange.”
“Let’s go, Irma,” said Sofia. With the women calling angrily after us, we followed Daisy up the dank stairway to a one-room flat on the fifth floor.
“Thank you, thank you, lady. He’s not so bad like they say.” Daisy pushed open a battered door and cried, “Jake, here’s the doctor lady.”
A tall man lay splayed facedown on a narrow cot, twitching, his face turned from us. Red splotches covered his arms and the skin on his back seemed loose, as if the flesh was melting away. Sweaty curls of sandy hair plastered his head like a wet lamb’s wool. A filthy cup bobbed in a water bucket on the floor.
Sofia stepped close to the man and gently took his wrist, feeling for pulse. “Has he lost weight recently?”
“Yes, he don’t eat, just drinks and drinks and excuse me, ma’am, pisses all the time. Then he stopped going to work. He said he’s afraid of these stairs. He don’t look it now, but he was a big, strong man before he started melting away.”
“Does he have pains anywhere?”
“No, not that he said. First I thought it was just laziness, but this morning he was got up to piss and just fell, right there on the floor. Like a baby, weak as a baby. I put him to bed and he’s gone worse and worse since then.”
“Why didn’t you get a doctor?”
“He wouldn’t let me. He said it wasn’t worth it. Then I heard a boy shouting that the Eye-talian doctor lady was coming and with Jake sleeping I figured I’d fetch you even if he yells at me again. But he’s not yelling no more. He just lays there twitching, just melting away.” She sobbed into her sleeve.
“Daisy, do you have anything sweet here, honey or sugar, penny candy?”
She looked up. “No, but I got some porridge and potatoes. Isn’t there medicine to fix him? I can pay. I got a little money”—she hesitated—“last night.”
“Right now, he needs sugar. See if the neighbors have some, or go to the corner store.” With a desperate glance back at the cot, Daisy took her shawl and fled. Waves of nickering laughter followed the clatter of her shoes down the stairs.
“It’s bad,” Sofia whispered wearily. “Irma, can you bring me a chair?”
There was one in the corner of the cluttered room heaped with clothes. I made space on a table stacked with crusted plates and sprouting potatoes and began moving the clothes there: cotton drawers and a chemise, a crushed bonnet and fringed shawl, a man’s vest and chesterfield coat. My outstretched hands froze over a pair of striped trousers, brown derby hat, and slung across them, a wide leather belt. The chesterfield, the sandy hair. The heavy belt buckle clanging on a charred floor. Pain. Blood. The glass shard in my hand. When I lay on the scrubbed oak table.
“And, Irma, look at the chamber pot,” Sofia called. “We need to check his urine.” The cot creaked. Sofia must be turning him over. I glanced at a chipped bowl pushed half under the foot of the bed but not at the man, at him.
“The bowl’s empty,” I said, my voice as dry as wood.
My hand closed around the belt until it dug into my palms. How many girls had he dragged into that house, his den? Rage filled my body top to toe, a flame of rage. I was strong. I could do it. If I was alone in the room for an instant, couldn’t I press that belt down on his neck, sick as he was, or better, bridle him? Couldn’t I stand over his cot and scream into the clammy white face: “Remember me! Remember what you did to me, your filly bitch!”
I looked over my shoulder. The man lay on his back now, brushy mustache pointing up, ragged on the shrunken face. Sofia was shaking the bony shoulders, calling, “Jake!” Can you hear me?” The man groaned, eyes closed. If he opened them, they would be pale blue, gleaming hot in the dingy room.
Sofia was leaning close to him. Get back! I wanted to cry out. Don’t touch him. I should leave, I knew, just leave the room, this building, this street, but my feet would not move.
“Irma, can you bring the chair?” Sofia asked impatiently. “And come smell his breath. Like alcohol but more fruity. His urine would taste sweet too, come.” But I stood at the table, eyes nailed to the lank body. Then I closed my eyes. Sofia’s breath was heavy then, I remember, and his was uneven. The room filled with heaving air. She sighed and began: “It’s diabetes mellitus that caused the thirst and the wasting as well. I’m sure of it. The urine test was described by Thomas Willis in the 1600s,” her teaching voice was saying. “It’s a sure sign of diabetic shock, which leads—Irma?”
“Sofia, I’m sorry. I can’t stay.”
She sighed. “I know. There’s someone sick in every flat. They all want—”
“I mean that’s the man who raped me. This is his belt. And those are his trousers behind me. He called me his—” My voice collapsed.
Sofia looked between us. “You’re sure it’s him?” I nodded. Then she saw the belt taut in my hands. Her eyes widened. “Irma, put that down. Dro
p it.”
“He had a knife. He said he’d cut my throat if I made a sound. He said—” In two steps she had closed the distance between us, blocking my view of the man. “Please, drop the belt. Let it go.” Perhaps I dropped it, for the clasp rang on the floor with a sickening jolt through my body. “Irma,” she said quietly, taking my empty hands. “If you say that it’s him I believe you. And I can imagine—it’s my work to imagine the pain that he caused you. But would it help, really, to hurt him now? Would that undo anything?” I closed my eyes.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Irma, open your eyes and look at him.” The large hands had flopped toward the floor. Spittle ran from his mouth. He seemed to have shrunken, even in these last minutes. “For those who believe in judgment, he has been judged, he’s dying. Can you bring me that chair at least?”
How could she speak so calmly? But I walked to the table, picked up the chair and carried it to the bedside, stepping over the fallen belt. My legs were stiff as sticks.
“Thank you,” she said, sinking into the chair. “Irma, I’m not a priest. I don’t ask that you forgive what he did, certainly not excuse it, but the man must be attended. That’s why we’re here. It’s our work now.” She turned to me, taking my hot hand in her cool white ones. “Listen. Pulling a pea from a child’s ear, that was easy. And for the rest, you study anatomy and symptoms, you learn treatments. It gets easier, you get more sure. Even amputations get easier. It’s all here,” she touched her head. “But doing this,” she pointed to the twitching man, “tending someone who did wrong, and to you, that’s the hard part. It may be too hard.”
I stared at a bit of trampled ribbon on the worn wooden floor.
“I know that he raped you and probably others as well. I also know that sugar may revive him a little, but soon he’ll be in coma.” Sofia touched the long, naked feet. So clean. Had Daisy washed them? “They’re cool already. Irma, believe me, this is not the man who hurt you. This is a dying man. But you’re right, perhaps he deserves it.”
I forced myself to watch the heaving, bony chest. So many times I had wished on him the pain and mortal fear he caused me, at least bitter remorse and shame for what he’d done. The pale eyes opened and closed. The body heaved. What were his thoughts now, in the hour of his death?
The calm voice continued. “Irma, will you stay at least until Daisy returns? Then I can tend the others.”
“Yes,” I whispered, “I’ll stay.”
“Good then.” Sofia stood up slowly, pressed my shoulder. “Have her give him the sugar. I’ll be back.” She left us together, closing the door quietly behind her. Terrible breathing filled the room. A rat gnawed inside a wall and the bony blond head turned briefly toward the sound. I stared out the window into the gathering dusk until Daisy came panting in with a sack of penny candy.
“See if he’ll take one,” I told her. My voice seemed flat and strange.
The eyes flicked open and glazed blue fixed on me for an instant and then drifted off. The eyes closed again and the heavy head flopped toward Daisy. She pressed a cherry candy between dry lips. “Here, Jake. It’ll make you better, the lady doctor says so.”
“Huh,” he muttered. A long pause and then again, “Huh.” The wet red drop crested, peaked and fell on the thin pillow. The head lurched toward me and a word puffed out: “Who?”
“She came with the doctor. Rest now, Jake. You’ll feel better soon.” The eyes closed and the face sagged as if these few sounds had wasted him. He seemed smaller now. Daisy turned to me. “I’ll straighten up a bit, miss. I’m sorry, but with him sick, I let things go.” She took the belt from the floor, laid it carefully across the chesterfield and righted a penny print of dairymaids on the wall.
“Never mind that now, Daisy. You just sit with him.” I took a dingy washcloth from its nail and rinsed it in the water bucket. “Here, wipe his brow with this.” The breath came wet and rasping, paused and rasped again. The blotches were fading, leaving the long arms tinged with gray. I walked up to the dust-caked window that looked over ruffled domes of sycamores, silhouetted now against the sky. Behind me I heard Daisy’s steady “There, there now, Jake” and the slosh of her rag in water. I longed for Sofia’s light step to release me from this room with its stink of sickness and wide hands too close to mine, but the thin plank door barely muffled the other tenants shouting that their case was worse, far worse than their neighbors’ and Sofia must see them next.
“Miss?” Daisy whispered. “He’s sleeping now. I want you to know that it’s true what they say about us out there, how Jake sends me to the streets for work. I’m not a lady like you. Jake wasn’t always decent. He’d pick fights, drink too much and stay out late, but he always came back to me. We had our good times,” she insisted. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes, I believe you.” Would she believe that her Jake dragged girls into empty houses, gagged and raped them? How could she, and still sit by his bed?
She wiped the wide forehead gently, then the gaunt face and neck. “He was such a handsome man. All the girls looked at him when we went walking. They were jealous, you know?” I said nothing, which she took for assent. “Nobody but Jake ever paid me any mind. Because I’m a hunchback. See?” She lifted the shawl to show a bulge between the shoulders, high as a hand.
“A little, yes.” There would be constant pain, Sofia had once commented when a barkeeper showed us such a hump. No spine can be so bent and not have pain. I found an empty wooden crate and sat beside Daisy. She studied my face.
“You have a scar, miss,” she said.
“Yes. From the ship coming over.”
She nodded. “So you know. Most men won’t want a girl that’s not perfect when there’s plenty that are. So the ones that do want us usually aren’t so perfect either. Maybe not on the outside, but on the inside, see, so girls like us make them feel better. Anyway, that’s what I think.”
My cheek burned. What was Gustavo’s imperfection, then, that had him seek me out?
“Look at Jake!” Daisy cried. I followed her finger and yes, in this little time his flesh had changed again. It was grayish now, with a faint blue tinge around the mouth. Daisy smoothed the slick blond curls. “He won’t be getting better, will he?”
“No, Daisy, he won’t.”
“And it won’t be long now?”
“No, not long.”
“At least he’s not hurting, is he?”
I looked at the slack jaw. “No, I don’t think so.”
“I’m not calling any preacher man. Jake didn’t hold with any kind of God talk.” She sat straighter. “It’s true what they said,” she jutted her chin towards the stairwell. “We aren’t married.” Her voice rose. “But we were going to, soon. And he was going to get a job from a friend with the police in Indiana. He always wanted to be a copper, the kind on horseback. Jake loved horses.”
Now whoa there while I mount you, filly bitch. I gripped the crate.
Daisy looked over in alarm. “Miss, what’s wrong? You want some water?” She pointed to the water bucket and dirty bobbing cup. “Fresh from the well this morning.” I shook my head, although my throat felt dry as ash.
The dying man’s face smoothed as the white hands curled upward like a sleeping child’s. Think of him this way, only this way. “Where is his family, Daisy?” I managed.
She shook her head. “Jake never talked about them.” As twilight came, mothers up and down the street began calling their children home. “I come from a farm near Perth Amboy in New Jersey. We kept dairy cows. And you, miss, where are you from?”
“A little town in Italy called Opi. We kept sheep.”
She smiled. “Was it nice there?”
“I liked it.”
“I liked Perth Amboy too, but—I had to leave.” She stroked the waxy brow. “Miss, do you think Jake can hear me, if I talk real close in his ear?”
“I think so, Daisy.”
“Well then, can I say good-bye? He was goo
d to me mostly, whatever they say, and I tried to take care of him like a wife. Do you mind?”
I stood up. “No, I don’t mind.” At the door I asked, “Will you go to Indiana—afterwards?”
She looked around the shabby flat. “Maybe. I got no reason to stay here. Thank you for asking, and for trying to help Jake and thank the doctor lady too. God bless both of you.” I held out my hand, but then hugged her, stretching my arms around the ridged back.
Sofia met me in the stairway. She looked tired and let me carry her bag. “Gone?” she asked, nodding at the door.
“Not yet.” It was full dark on the hushed street.
“Was he conscious?”
“Once, for a minute.”
“Did he know you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Just as well. Irma, I know it was hard. But you stayed and I’m proud of you. Very proud.” She slipped her arm in mine and leaned slightly against me as we walked a block in silence. A warm breeze ruffled our skirts. We talked of the night’s cases, a new anatomy book and a clinic like hers that had just opened in San Francisco, the Pacific Dispensary. She wanted to show me a letter from its director. I listened vaguely, still hearing Daisy’s voice and Jake’s rasping breath. Yet the long walk was peaceful and the pain in my chest released a little, like a tight corset loosened. At her door, I gave Sofia her bag. “Jake did do one good thing,” she said. “He brought you to me and I’m grateful for that.” She laid a cool hand along my cheek. “Buona notte, Irma.”
“Buona notte, Sofia.” I roused Enrico and he walked me home in the muggy night.
Chapter Twelve
Mr. John Muir
That Friday, Vittorio met me at Sofia’s door. “She won’t be here this evening. She’s with her sister,” he said, staring over my shoulder at boys kicking a rag bag up and down the street.
“What sister?” I demanded. “She only had the one who died in childbirth.”
“A half sister then. Let’s get ready. We’ll be running the clinic ourselves this time.”
When We Were Strangers Page 22